’It is not for the disadvantage of the host
That I go on each wandering in its turn;
It is to avoid the great man
Who protects Mag Murthemne.

’Not that my mind is not distressed
On account of the straying on which I go,
But if perchance I may avoid even afterwards
Cuchulainn Mac Sualtaim.’

Then they went till they were in Iraird Cuillend.  Eirr and Indell, Foich and Foclam (their two charioteers), the four sons of Iraird Mac Anchinne, [Marginal gloss:  ’or the four sons of Nera Mac Nuado Mac Taccain, as it is found in other books.’] it is they who were before the host, to protect their brooches and their cushions and their cloaks, that the dust of the host might not soil them.  They found the withe that Cuchulainn threw, and perceived the grazing that the horses had grazed.  For Sualtaim’s two horses had eaten the grass with its roots from the earth; Cuchulainn’s two horses had licked the earth as far as the stones beneath the grass.  They sit down then, until the host came, and the musicians play to them.  They give the withe into the hands of Fergus Mac Roich; he read the ogam that was on it.

When Medb came, she asked, ‘Why are you waiting here?’

‘We wait,’ said Fergus,’ because of the withe yonder.  There is an ogam on its ——­, and this is what is in it:  “Let no one go past till a man is found to throw a like withe with his one hand, and let it be one twig of which it is made; and I except my friend Fergus.”  Truly,’ said Fergus, ’Cuchulainn has thrown it, and they are his horses that grazed the plain.’

And he put it in the hands of the druids; and Fergus sang this song: 

’Here is a withe, what does the withe declare to us? 
What is its mystery? 
What number threw it? 
Few or many?

’Will it cause injury to the host,
If they go a journey from it? 
Find out, ye druids, something therefore
For what the withe has been left.

’——­ of heroes the hero who has thrown it, Full misfortune on warriors; A delay of princes, wrathful is the matter, One man has thrown it with one hand.

’Is not the king’s host at the will of him,
Unless it breaks fair play? 
Until one man only of you
Throw it, as one man has thrown it. 
I do not know anything save that
For which the withe should have been put. 

                                                  Here is a withe.’

Then Fergus said to them:  ‘If you outrage this withe,’ said he, ’or if you go past it, though he be in the custody of a man, or in a house under a lock, the ——­ of the man who wrote the ogam on it will reach him, and will slay a goodly slaughter of you before morning, unless one of you throw a like withe.’

’It does not please us, indeed, that one of us should be slain at once,’ said Ailill.  ’We will go by the neck of the great wood yonder, south of us, and we will not go over it at all.’